[d] enclosed in brackets chaotic perfectionist for hire

It's Friday, and we need something else to do, right?

I received a couple of files over Pownce of avatars created by various people, and decided to make one of my own (as I'm sure plenty of others have done). For the few of you who have actually seen what I look like, how'd I do?

It's from Face Your Manga, and it's pretty fun. Yes, it's another "make yourself into..." site, like the Simpson's Character Generator and the South Park character generator (among others). It also feel a little "Mii"-like, but that's ok. I don't have a Wii yet.

I'd like to see more of them... So make one, save it somewhere, then post the picture for everyone to see. Flickr works well for this, from what I've seen. Good luck, and have fun.

I posted this on plurk, but wanted to open it up a little more.

Any suggestions on a 1st sock pattern...? I'd like to do toe-up, and have two skeins of Järbo Garn Mini Raggi and size 3 dpns (if that helps).

In looking around, I've seen a lot of different patterns. The part I'm stuck on (which is pretty much how things go for me) is the casting on for the socks. Do I use Judy's magic cast on? Or this one on wiseNeedle?

Once I've figured that out, I think I'm just going to do plain stockinette through to the heel and standard ribbing through to the top. They're for me anyway (my wonderful wife got the yarn and needles for me), so I thought I would start simple... and toe-up, unless there's a compelling reason to start cuff-down instead.

Now that I think about it, any suggestions for the pattern, cast-on, heel, or other parts would be greatly appreciated. I've heard that socks are an addictive project, but I'm willing to find out how true that is.

...to say the least. Ick. Who else has seasonal allergies?

I'm not entirely sure, but mine always seem to start when the oak trees start bloomin' (I'm in the Northeastern US). The worst is when it's in full swing, but I can tell when it's about to start. It's usually just a little itch in one eye, then both, then a feeling like a tickle in my throat and ears, then BAM. Time for the... well, I don't have a prescription, but I take either Claritin or sometimes Benadryl or Sudafed (if I don't have Claritin).

Any of those is ok (I started with the Claritin yesterday), but I don't like the medicine-head feeling and the cottonmouth from allergy medications. I had a trial prescription for Allegra a few years ago... maybe I should look into that again.

Although I could just look up allergies on WebMD (or JFGI, or wherever else), but I'm looking for "real people" suggestions. I've heard that taking a teaspoon of local honey every day will help (and even if it doesn't work, it's tasty anyway).

Luckily, mine are only seasonal at the beginning of spring...

Let's say you have a ridiculously long URL to share (like something from Google Maps, for example), and you want it as short as possible. There are a few other options (tinyurl, snurl/snipurl/snipr, etc), but then I found is.gd, which is about as small as it gets.

Another thing I like about is.gd - if you put a hyphen at the end of the URL, the link will bring you to their site and show you what the full URL is... very handy for rickroll prevention (unless you like that), among other reasons. They list a few of the reasons as to why the site is so useful, in case you're interested. Oh, and do I need to say I just like the service, and that I don't work for them? Ok, I don't.

Any favorites out there, or do you just use whatever's around?

As I've mentioned before, I'm in quite a few communities and signed up on a lot of sites. This includes Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, and Tumblr - all different, but in some ways much the same. Right now I'm pretty much tracking what happens through Twitter only, through IM (Pidgin). I tried using IMified, but the bot for gtalk died for me or something.

Is anyone using something to post to multiple sites? I know of a couple, but they're not for Windows (I'm on XP Pro, SP2). Would that be like a reverse aggregator?

On New Year's eve, my brother and his girlfriend brought over Perpetual Commotion.

In case you haven't played it, commotion is a very accurate description. The idea is to get rid of your pile of 13 cards faster than the other people you're playing against. That's the easy part of learning how to play.The hard part is actually getting rid of them before anyone else.

Start with four to six people (or if you like chaos, you can get additional decks). The game says you can play with two or three as well, but the game play is more fun with at least four. Count out 13 cards facedown, then flip five cards in a row face up next to them. This is where the fun begins.

The idea is to make colored piles, starting with a Start card, then going numbers 2 to 12, and finish with a Stop card. The piles are in the middle of the table, for anyone to play. The Start and Stop cards can start or finish any pile, but the numbers must be matching in color. Instead of confusing things any more, you can check out the instructions to see how it's played. Once someone goes out, you add up the points - first one to 150 is the winner.

As it was New Year's Eve the first time we played, there was a bit of imbibing happening, so things were a little slow. K and I got to play again Saturday night (and again Sunday afternoon), and we want to play more. Once you get into it, there's chaos... and a lot of swearing. It's not for the faint of heart, and some self-control is needed if there are little ears around. Anyone up for a couple of rounds?

Ever since the movie The Saint (with Val Kilmer and Elizabeth Shue, not the TV series with Roger Moore), I've wanted a phone that flips open - not just a clamshell, but something with a keyboard inside. I thought that was the coolest thing, and until I saw the price... it was practically mine. I don't even remember what the price was, just that it was WAY out of my budget.

It went to the back of my mind as I got my first mobile phone in 1999. It was a sweet Nokia 5160 and I thought it was (almost) the best thing ever. That was replaced by a Motorola v60i (good except for the snap-off antenna), then a Motorola v265, then a Motorola e815 (see a trend?).

Our "New Every Two" was up last May (whee, Verizon Family Plan), and we finally got around to picking new phones. After looking at what I could get for free (if I had the money I would've liked the vx6800), I went with the LG enV Green. After waiting a couple of days, it came in, and I like it.

Has anyone else played with one? It's got a good look and feel, plus green *is* my favorite color. There's plenty to play with, but it's still really good as a phone. Speakerphone is easy to use and turn on/off, whether it's open or closed.

Now, the next step is to see how much I can get onto it. I want to be able to make my own ringtones, and I don't want to have to send them to myself (regardless of having unlimited messaging, which I don't have). Verizon is a pain and won't let you do it on your own, at least without messing with a few things first. Luckily, the camera is pretty decent, but I still want to get all of the pictures from my old phone onto it. If anyone has any tips on transferring data and/or ringtones, please let me know.

I like tea.

There's something about it that just makes me come back for more (no, not just the caffeine). While reading ThinkGeek's newsletter earlier today, I found Monkey Picked Tea for sale. Yes, it was covered by Digg about four months ago, but it got me thinking about how many options there are for tea... and that you can get tea (not cheaply) that's picked by a monkey.

My favorite (right now) is probably still Earl Grey for hot tea, and I haven't picked something for an iced tea. I usually just use whatever I can find, which has ranged from good to flavored sawdust (I didn't realize how old it was before I used it). Any suggestions? I'm looking to make the transition from bags to loose tea, and any links or info would be great to have.

The other option would be to grow my own tea, but I think that's going to have to wait for now, at least until I'm in a house (or have a window that our cat can't poach from).

Yes, a little slow to get on board, but I finally signed up for an account at Remember the Milk. I didn't think I had all that much to put on it, but apparently there was more than a few things to get organized.

If you haven't used it, try it out... It allows you to manage your to-do lists in a pretty useful way. It's not over-bearing and it seems to have some decent integration (including gmail through a Firefox add-on - summed up on the RTM blog). You can also print out your lists and subscribe to them as RSS/Atom feeds.

Oh, and you can share tasks with other users, so there's a good collaborative feel to it. That could be useful for projects where people aren't necessarily in direct contact. You know, in case you actually *need* to remember the milk.

One last thing... Does anyone else think of Sesame Street when they see it? "A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter..."

It's bad, but I don't have a really solid backup schedule for my system. There's plenty in place for my "work" system, but not for the one I'm writing this on now.

The closest thing I have to a schedule is running SyncToy once in a while to get my whole profile folder (I'm using Windows XP) onto a separate system and a separate HD. Far from perfect (no image), but at least I have the data.

If funds weren't a limiting factor, I'd just buy a couple of 500GB drives and put them into a beige box running linux (like Ubuntu!) and run backups to that, but unfortunately... I don't have a wealthy benefactor to help with that.

There's box.net, but I feel like that would be limited. I could also try the all-too-shaky "save it to a mounted gmail volume" but that's more than a little scary for important stuff.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a free/cheap solution to back up my system (and possibly one other)? Maybe I'll just have to suck it up and buy a new, fresh HD...